Mark Zuckerberg, the new dictator of Facebookistan

Facebook's democratic process was an empty gesture that made all of us look bad.

Facebook moved last week to eliminate the ability of users to vote on data use and privacy policy changes, according to posts in several languages on its site governance page on November 21. Both the timing (immediately before the Thanksgiving holiday in America) and the content changes have raised eyebrows with the entities who have worked to keep Facebook in check, but the company may have a point in eliminating its voting mechanisms. Does this simply give users the democracy they deserve—that is, none at all?

Facebook announced its decision to democratize its policy change process in April 2009, with plenty of fanfare and a blog post from Mark Zuckerberg itself. The very first vote took place in the following days, effectively voting in users’ ability to vote. The second vote didn’t take place until June 2012; both votes had a turnout of well under one percent of Facebook’s user base. Facebook announced both votes on its blog and the second on its site governance page, which is followed by 2.5 million users, and that's as much alerting as it bothered to do.

The third vote, which will likely be the last, is upcoming. Facebook’s proposed policy change this time, among a couple of other tweaks, removes the need for Facebook to invite comments that may lead to a mandatory vote (voting about voting, yo dawg), and removes the need for the company to advise users of any changes made for “legal or administrative” reasons.

Laying aside the vague terminology for a minute, the idea of having their votes taken away is understandably shocking to users. But the votes held so far have done nothing but disgrace everyone involved.

For Facebook, the comparatively minuscule turnout, combined with copy-and-pasted or knee-jerk reaction comments on the related post, makes users look slovenly and apathetic. But to users, the incredibly high threshold required to make results binding (30 percent) and Facebook’s reticence about publicizing the votes make the company look like it’s trying to sneakily stack the deck in its favor while enacting changes that informed parties are unhappy about.

The overarching problem for users is not actually apathy, but ignorance. Many aren’t even familiar with the ways their personal data is being used, and slightly fewer are unaware there’s anything they can do about it. The blame for that falls partly on users, but Facebook, wanting their business, isn't exactly a reliable narrator when it comes to describing how it makes money. Facebook’s real problem is that its approach to governance was unrealistic even when it was a third of the size in 2009 that it is now, combined with a need to move even more quickly on its business end now that it’s accountable to shareholders. There’s no longer time to play these token goodwill games with its users.

As Facebook decides to take away the vote, the real question is whether the service is more like a sovereign nation or a service. Practically speaking, in terms of what Facebook is to Facebook, it’s the latter: Facebook buys our data for the price of feeding our collective interest in each other (and, increasingly, brands and pages) and sells it to advertisers.

But Facebook is something else to users. Is using Facebook comparable to living in America? Is its use that integral and essential? Or is it more like a retail store in a free economy, where if we don’t like how it does business, we’re free to walk?

It seems silly to say that Facebook is as impossible to leave as the country you live in, but hard to argue that it’s not becoming more so, socially, every day. And more importantly, Facebook wants to be that essential, as evidenced by its aggressive pursuit of user engagement and its spread as an authenticator.

The loss of the ability to vote seems ominous, particularly since Facebook excuses itself from informing users about policy changes at all if they’re made under the broad umbrella of “legal or administrative” reasons. It feels like we had opportunities to prove we care about how Facebook does business and squandered them. But it also feels like Facebook, setting the binding-vote threshold at 30 percent and materially informing almost no one about it, didn’t do its level best to make votes work.

The post announcing the policy change has already received over 12,000 dissenting comments, and that’s just the English-language version; this is well over the 7,000 required to push the change to a vote. But we feel comfortable guessing that this vote won’t rate enough participation to be binding; rather, it will fall under the 30 percent threshold, which Facebook will consider “advisory,” one last forced “we get it, you’re mad."

The governance of Facebook has vast implications for over a billion people now. Its policies have the attention of government and privacy interest groups, but users (and Facebook) failed to raise significant awareness about the issues over more than three years. And so here lies the Facebook site governance vote, the failed Internet democracy experiment.

Promoted Comments

If Facebook *really* wanted people to vote couldn't they just insert the post onto everyone's wall, or make it an advertisement or a splash screen when logging in? It doesn't seem to be that difficult for such a company to do what it wants to its own website, but I don't think they ever really cared. It seems like the democracy theater was just a way to show user apathy for something many probably didn't know or care about so they could eventually "strip" said privilege at a later time.

101 Reader Comments

I highly doubt there's a casual person out there who gives a damn, hence why crap like this happens. Oh, they'll feign detest if the media makes a big enough fuss (ala iPhone and Android tracking) but in the end the convenience and near universal availability of the service means people will just shrug and go back to posting their status updates on their phone.

"But Facebook is something else to users. Is using Facebook comparable to living in America? Is its use that integral and essential? Or is it more like a retail store in a free economy, where if we don’t like how it does business, we’re free to walk?"

What is this paragraph saying? Living in America is integral and essential to something? Is it also then implying that in America, you can't walk away from corporate business?

Edit- I guess that means living in America is integral and essential to big business? Either way, don't mind me, I'm off to like posts involving played out memes that I have seen ad nauseum. I wish Facebook had a dislike button...

The problem here (if there is one) is that people don't really see these services as something to invest energy in beyond using them. If they get pissed off, they will "vote" by dropping the service like a rock. Or like a Myspace.

well, if Facebook is like living in America, then its decisions will overwhelmingly skew towards big businesses and influential lobbyists. voting will happen, but in a very predictable way that doesn't pose much of a threat to the status quo.

If Facebook *really* wanted people to vote couldn't they just insert the post onto everyone's wall, or make it an advertisement or a splash screen when logging in? It doesn't seem to be that difficult for such a company to do what it wants to its own website, but I don't think they ever really cared. It seems like the democracy theater was just a way to show user apathy for something many probably didn't know or care about so they could eventually "strip" said privilege at a later time.

Letting the customer vote on something which essentially the company's business strategy doesn't strike me as an economically sound idea, I am not surprised to see it go away.It seems to me that with the voting on user policies FB wanted to be regarded on equal footing with their user base, a peer under peers. This has obviously failed. Now FB acts again as what it really is: the master in its own house. At least they let go of the fig - leave.

I think that 30% turnout is much higher than it sounds to people. Keep in mind in the US we have a 50% voter turnout, and that's a much different number. When people die in real life, leave the country, etc, they are removed, whereas anyone who quits facebook without deleting their profile, makes a new fake profile they don't remember later, or simply doesn't log into facebook within the timeframe of the vote, it wouldn't work. I suspect that even if there was a pop up with only a yes vote that couldn't be dismissed until you clicked submit, facebook still wouldn't hit that 30% threshold, which shows how silly this idea was in the first place.

I would be cautious about comparison between the cost of leaving facebook and the cost of leaving your country.Sure, facebook is used for a lot of social contacts. Yet, you may not be on facebook and still enjoy a normal social life, even with a pretty robust internet component that spans multiple continents. That's what I do and I haven't ever been on facebook.

I may be overly zealous, but the title seems overly sensationalist and somewhat insulting to people living in middle-east countries or coming from there. Not helping is the picture showing Zuckerberg photoshopped with "middle-east traits" and women in the background.

I may be overly zealous, but the title seems overly sensationalist and somewhat insulting to people living in middle-east countries or coming from there. Not helping is the picture showing Zuckerberg photoshopped with "middle-east traits" and women in the background.

Not helping is the picture showing Zuckerberg photoshopped with "middle-east traits" and women in the background.

Wadiya is supposed to be in North Africa.Oh wait, I guess you totally missed the reference being made...Both Zuckerberg and Sacha Baron-Cohen belong to the same middle-eastern cultural group, though.

Back on topic - actually I think this is a good thing. The nonsense about 'democratisation' was always a laughable sham that merely reduced Facebook's integrity even more (if that's possible). It's far better to get rid of it and stop pretending.

Sounds like some people (i.e. zneak) have never heard/seen "The Dictator". Crap film, but amusing central character.

That's OK, geeks traditionally fall to know anything about mainstream culture (to their determent - knowing a little about pop culture helps when conducting small talk with non-geeks). But think about why a random bearded fellow in front of female soldiers might seem a bit out of place to begin with.

If there are people to exploit and money to be had, it's all but certain that a company will go in that direction. Isn't this something that every adult knows by now? The shocking news isn't that Facebook is doing this, it's that somehow it needs to even be said that it's happening in an article.

Problem is the more restricted data sharing is on Facebook, the less value Facebook has to folks who want to capitalize on that data in some fashion. At least that's how I'd bet the corporation sees it. At the extreme end, defining any restrictions at all lowers the probability of making money from having that data.

If Zuckerberg wanted to address the problem in a positive fashion, he'd find some way to consult with and fund some #occupy to redefine the process to work more organically and better foster substantive discussions. That'd buy Facebook a year or two minimum before the process would have any output, and they could add it to the Why We're Good Guys list.

Me, too. Several years ago. (Found the well-hidden transaction for totally deleting, not just suspending, my account.) Tried diaspora, found it boring...maybe lack of population, or maybe I'm just not the social type. (Uhoh...now I'm gonna fall into that stereotype: "loner".)

Me, too. Several years ago. (Found the well-hidden transaction for totally deleting, not just suspending, my account.) Tried diaspora, found it boring...maybe lack of population, or maybe I'm just not the social type. (Uhoh...now I'm gonna fall into that stereotype: "loner".)

I'll be a loner with you. I only use my facebook account for keeping up with info for my charity bike rides (and group ride training sessions). I've only ever heard about these vote things on here (and I only remember hearing about it afterwards)

Yeah. I already left facebook almost a year ago. I was semi-interested in Unthink, but that's apparently gone. It's too bad MySpace fell off. Say what you will, I sure enjoyed the CSS and HTML coding opportunities. That was one of the things I missed when I went to fb; everyone's page looked the same. That, and it got old when it was opened up to people in high school, and then everyone. It was an achievement in college, felt like you were moving up in the world.

I just don't see the point in facebook any more. I think the privacy policy is unfortunate, but it seems to be the way it is these days. All the companies I use these days seem to be horribly skewed against the consumer. EA Origin, Steam, and Microsoft all have binding arbitration clauses and terms that can change at any time. Facebook is just the latest to adopt such anti-consumer policies.

I use Facebook as something of a news aggregator. I have more pages liked than I do Facebook friends, and it's actually quite useful as I'll go on and find new posts from The Oatmeal, XMBC developments, and so on, all nicely prepared and waiting in my News Feed. You could say "oh well that's what RSS is for", to which I say a lot of people and companies don't even use RSS, but they do have social pages, and often they'll post interesting news not posted anywhere else but on Facebook.

Though to be honest, the other reason I won't give up Facebook any time soon is because some people consider it a necessary part of the Internet. There are people out there who don't understand why someone would not have a Facebook account, as if creating an account on some private company's web site is a necessary passport to being a human in this day and age. Obviously I don't believe that, but it does make me see more "normal" to non-geeks I've noticed, and I want to keep up that facade as much as possible. Oh, and if I give up my Facebook account, I'll probably piss off some of my friends who take my unfriending of them (which would automatically happen as per the closure) personally. And I don't need that shit right now.

Its just ridiculous calling Mark Zuckeberg a dictator when the MUCH WORSE Chris Tolles and Topix receive little to no press.

Facebook is not perfect but it is far better than Topix. I am tired of seeing all the bad press about Facebook while the monster of Topix, remains untouched and unheard about. Its not right. Facebook remains very functional social media.